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Definition

What is Meta Description?

A meta description is a short HTML tag that summarises a page — Google often uses it as the grey snippet under the blue link on the search results page.

Also called: meta desc · SERP snippet

The tag lives in the <head>: <meta name="description" content="…"/>. Google truncates it at roughly 155–160 characters on desktop and 120 on mobile, so the first sentence has to earn the click.

A good meta description restates the page's value proposition, includes the primary keyword naturally, and ends with a light call to action ('Compare 12 tools', 'Free and no signup').

Search engines rewrite meta descriptions about 60 % of the time when the query doesn't match. That's fine — writing a strong description still wins the other 40 % of impressions.

Try a tool that uses Meta Description

Meta Tag Generator

Generate SEO-friendly title, description, Open Graph and Twitter meta tags.

AI Meta Description Generator

Write 5 click-worthy meta descriptions under 160 characters.

SERP Preview Tool

Preview exactly how your page will look in Google search results.

Related definitions

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the single, preferred web address for a page — declared with a <link rel="canonical"> tag so search engines consolidate ranking signals on one version.

Open Graph

Open Graph is a set of <meta property="og:…"> tags, invented by Facebook, that control how your page looks when someone shares the link on social media or chat apps.

Schema Markup (Structured Data)

Schema markup is structured data — usually JSON-LD in a <script> tag — that describes a page's contents in schema.org vocabulary so search engines can render rich results.

robots.txt

robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that tells web crawlers which paths they may or may not fetch.